Warlock Apprentice

Till now, Angor didn’t know that illusions could affect his soul as well.

With each passing second, he felt his mind to be even more stressed out than before.

“Give me a minute… I’ll try again.”

He left his body behind and used the best speed he could manage. He assumed that he could reach the surface under three seconds if nothing stopped him.

One minute later, he returned to the group again. His grim expression already told the others what happened.

“It’s all because of me… If only I take our boat a little farther…” Nausica sulked as she accused herself.

Nobody said anything against her words, but they were beginning to direct annoyed looks at her.

Nausica was always calm and confident about everything. As Angor believed, she would say sorry and then try to amend her mistake in normal circumstances, rather than wasting time on these self-accusations.

“… No, I failed.” He shook his head again after removing several more active nodes.

They couldn’t leave the strange area without solving the problem, and they were getting really fidgety as the remaining time ticked away.

“If only we can forcefully control our own emotions…” Nausica mumbled.

“They say that wizards can all do that. But… we aren’t there yet…” said Shan.

Their words just gave Angor another idea. Control emotions? But I can do that too.

His special talent allowed him to create a music box that affected the emotion of someone as powerful as Lady Mirror. He did more tests later and learned that he could do more than manipulating emotions—he could warp someone’s sense of direction, space, and about oneself.

Usually, the victim of his attempts had to be weaker in terms of strength, but he could also make exceptions by blending nightmare aura in his illusions, which sometimes allowed him to affect the minds of mighty beings.

He never figured out how it worked. It was probably because of his Nightmare Form.

So, if I take control of their emotions first, will they still have trouble with the enemy’s illusion?

The others heard his suggestion and immediately agreed to the radical plan as they didn’t have any other options.

Angor did his test on Nausica first, since Nausica was still a level-1 apprentice, which meant he didn’t need extra effort to get inside her mind.

But how exactly should I control her?

Angor would like to avoid using anything that affected Nausica’s own judgment or any joyful emotions which might be troublesome in this dire situation.

He finally made a decision—calmness.

He planned to forcefully tell Nausica to stay calm and suppress all other mental interference. However, he had to make it work by using illusions while the target was inside. He couldn’t create “mobile” illusions right now.

He thought about another approach to affect someone’s emotion. Nightmare illusions.

This more advanced version of illusion relied on his own nightmare aura to trick people. He didn’t need actual illusion nodes for this. Instead, he simply had to inject some nightmare aura into someone’s head. It would carry the types of emotions that he wanted to achieve.

As a small trace of gray energy sank in between Nausica’s eyebrows, the woman’s original carefree and indolent temperament slowly turned serene and aloof as if she had become a second Keely.

“How do you feel?” Angor asked.

“Good. All unnecessary thoughts are gone and I can think as clearly as ever. I believe I can start meditating as soon as I sat down.”

The others grew extremely curious about Angor’s wonderful mind-controlling ability, and at the same time, a little afraid of it.

“Get ready, the nodes around you are moving again.”

They watched closely and waited for the result that would ultimately decide whether they could escape from the unknown illusion.